FeedFront Magazine Articles Archives - Page 10 of 10 - Affiliate Marketing with Missy Ward, Affiliate Summit Co-Founder & Co-CEO

How to Choose an Affiliate Network

by GenoPrussakov

With the multitude of options out there, the question of how to choose an affiliate network frequently becomes the first one for a merchant to answer.

First of all, let’s clarify what we are really selecting. When looking for an affiliate network, you are looking for a vendor who will handle all of your affiliate program’s tracking, reporting, and affiliate payments.

At the very outset, every merchant must understand that while selecting an affiliate network they are not selecting an agency that will run the affiliate program by recruiting affiliates, and driving in sales/leads. While some affiliate networks do offer management as add-on service, none do this by default.

It appears that some merchants are merely extending the definition of advertising networks to include affiliate networks. While just as ad networks, affiliate networks do connect advertisers with publishers; they do not ensure that the advertiser actually gets advertised.

In most scenarios, it is the advertiser’s own responsibility to manage the affiliate program and recruit affiliates. Unlike ad networks, affiliate networks do not get paid on a CPM basis.

Affiliate networks make their money on transaction fees, which are normally calculated as a percentage of each affiliate payment subtracted from your account. You can think of it as of a credit card processing fee.

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How to Become a YouTube SEO Rock Star

by GregRollett

Did you know that YouTube is serving over a billion video views every day? With that amount of entertainment, news, information and mayhem clogging up your customer’s computers, you need a more efficient way to reach them in the Goliath of online video and cluttered search engine results.

With the growth of universal search, affiliates need to utilize video to get their products and services in front of potential buyers and the best way to do that is through proper optimization of their videos.

Here are 5 techniques to get your videos pulling inside of YouTube and within the major search engines.

1. Proper Titles. Writing a title that is compelling for both viewers and search engines can be tricky. Digging into keyword research is your best bet here, as long tail phrases are easier to rank for and often lead to higher conversions. When writing these titles, keep them to 65 characters with your strong keywords to the start of the title.

2. URL Leading Description. When writing your description there are a few things to note. The first is that by using http://yourlink.com, YouTube will automatically make a live link that can send viewers directly to your landing page, offer, or Web site. I recommend using this as the first thing in your description so viewers can easily click over to your site. Read more “How to Become a YouTube SEO Rock Star” →

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Dealing with Latent Affiliate Links

by LoriWeiman

Latent links refer to affiliate URLs that are for expired offers or are no longer valid, but are still active e.g. listed in a search listing, blog, or other Web page. Because the link is not valid, the landing page for a latent link is likely an error page.

These links are damaging to the merchant due to a poor user experience and damaging to the affiliate’s ROI due to poor conversions. There are several events that can cause a link to become a latent link:

Affiliate Removal. The affiliate is removed from the merchant’s affiliate program. In this case, the link usually will redirect to an error page hosted by the affiliate network.
Old Offers. The merchant removes the offer. In this scenario, the link may resolve to an error page on the merchant’s web site or hopefully to an appropriate alternative page.
Out of Stock. The merchant sells out of an item. Usually these kinds of links point to the actual product / offer page with an ‘out of stock’ message on the page.

Advice for Merchants

Redirect:
- Ex-Affiliates: Ask your affiliate network provider to redirect links with the affiliate’s ID to a landing page on your Web site – not the affiliate network’s Web site.
- Old Offers / Out of Stock: Redirect traffic to a best alternative landing page to ensure a good user experience. Don’t let consumers land on an ‘out of stock’ or ‘invalid offer’ page.

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